Tony Murphy, an Irish national, was recently confirmed by the Members of the European Court of Auditors (ECA) for a second three-year term as President until 1 October 2028. As last time he was elected, during the COVID crisis in 2022, the EU continues to face major challenges which impacts ECA’s work.
He began his career in the late 1970s as an auditor at the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General in Dublin. In 2018, he became an ECA Member and has mainly been responsible for financial audits, including the annual report on the EU budget.
As President, Tony Murphy will serve as ‘first among equals’. The President is in charge of ECA's corporate strategy, planning and performance management, communication and media relations, legal matters and internal audit, and represents the institution in its external relations.
ECA is an independent EU institution and, together with the European Ombudsman, considered as the fourth branch of power, besides the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, of the EU governance system. As EU’s independent external auditor, its reports and opinions are used to hold to account those responsible for implementing EU policies and programmes.
Despite his busy agenda, he found time for an interview with The Brussels Times about ECA’s audits and its challenges ahead.
Concerns about new MFF
In several audit reports, ECA has criticized the Commission for an “assurance gap” in the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) because payments are not based on actually incurred costs. According to ECA, shortcomings reflect the design of RRF, where progress and the satisfactory fulfilment of milestones and targets are the main conditions for payment.
Do you plan to publish an opinion on the control and audit arrangements in the new MFF?
“Yes, we hope to finalise our work by the beginning of 2026. We have already started working on it soon after the proposals were out in July, whilst we received the formal request from the European Parliament for an opinion in recent days,” ECA President Tony Murphy replied.
Is there a risk that the focus on flexibility and streamlining in the new MFF for 2028 – 2034 will jeopardize accountability and sound financial management?
“We’ll have to wait and see until our different audit chambers have finalized their assessment of the MFF for the opinion. But we have expressed serious concerns in previous audits about accountability and traceability of costs in the RRF, which is the instrument that served as model when designing the new MFF.
Our concerns are echoed by the European Ombudsman and the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO). Both have noticed an increasing number of suspected fraud cases. We are not against performance-based delivery mechanisms provided that they are not detrimental to accountability and traceability as we are ultimately talking about European taxpayers’ money.”
Are you satisfied with the minimum requirements for control and audit of the EU funding that the Commission says that it will indicate to the Member States?
“We’ll raise our concerns in the upcoming opinion. But it would seem that the proposals point to an RRF based model with national plans and in that context the issues and risks we have raised with RRF could potentially also apply here. But we still have to analyse the proposals in full.”
Just before the interview, ECA issued a new special report on budget flexibility and its link to the new MFF. The report estimates that flexibility has increased to 2,4% (€2 billion of the total budget) in the current MFF. The new MFF, according to the Commission, is more streamlined, flexible and impactful which will make it easier to move funding. It has also a special flexibility instrument (crisis loans).
“The current MFF already provides flexibility, but the legal framework is complex. We hope that the financial flexibility toolbox in the new MFF will become simpler as recommended in our audit,” he commented.
The draft report on budget flexibility was discussed before the Commission announced its MFF proposal on 16 July. The Commission accepted the audit recommendations partially. Should the report have been finalized in time before the MFF proposal?
“The Commission was well aware of the findings before the report was published and could have considered them when designing the MFF.”
Fight against fraud
Annual losses from fraud in particularly agriculture, cohesion and procurement are estimated to exceed 1 billion euro a year. Is this a figure you recognize?
“In our testing of EU budget spending, we check whether EU money has been spent in accordance with the rules, if this is not the case, we call it an error. On the other hand, fraud is a deliberate act of deception to gain an advantage. Although it can be difficult to identify fraud through standard audit procedures, our testing does reveal several cases of suspected fraud each year, but we are not fraud investigators and cannot comment on the figure.
Key figures on fraud specifically originate from the member states and those EU bodies that are tasked to investigate and prosecute fraud such as OLAF and EPPO. A few years ago, we issued a report looking closely at the Commission’s response to fraud in the Common Agricultural Policy.”
How can the fight against fraud and corruption in EU Member States be reinforced and become more effective? Are there overlapping responsibilities and lack of cooperation between OLAF and EPPO?
“The EU Anti-Fraud Architecture is a complex network of EU-level bodies (OLAF, EPPO, Eurojust, Europol, ECA, Commission, Parliament, Council) and Member State Anti-Fraud Coordination Services (AFCOS).
We expect to be publishing a special report on this around the end of this year about cooperation between EU bodies fighting fraud. Our main audit question in this audit is whether the EU bodies fighting fraud set up to work in a complementary manner and cooperating effectively in investigations.”
The ECA building in Luxembourg, credit: ECA
Cooperation between audit institutions
To what extend do ECA and national supreme audit institutions (SAI) cooperate in auditing EU funding and EU policies?
“The ECA and the SAIs of EU Member states meet annually in the context of the Contact Committee to discuss cooperation (next meeting in November) and we have working groups on technical level. However, cooperation might be hampered by the different mandates of the SAIs. This makes it difficult to agree on a common approach.
While all SAIs are required to audit national public funding, not all of them include EU funding in their scope. This latter task is often the responsibility of control and audit bodies or paying authorities that have been authorized by the Commission to verify the EU funding under shared management."
A number of SAIs can cooperate on the same audit topic, with a shared audit approach and resulting in separate national reports or a joint report. Do you carry out such parallel audits?
“We do carry out parallel audits but there are differences in legal frameworks, audit methodologies, and priorities as well as resource constraints from all parties that can limit the extent of cooperation,” he replied.
Is the single audit approach, where ECA is relying on the audits carried out by previous layers in the national control and audits system, working?
"Based on our experience in Cohesion policy we cannot fully rely on their work and need to carry out our own audits. The single audit approach has limitations. Also, based on the results in our RRF audits, and going forward in our upcoming opinion on the new MFF, we might have to flag these issues."
Support to candidate countries
When Russia invaded Ukraine, ECA strongly condemned the invasion and expressed its full support to Ukraine and its audit institution, the Accounting Chamber of Ukraine (ACU). What role does ECA play in preparing the SAIs in the enlargement countries for EU membership?
“The ECA cooperates with all SAIs in the enlargement countries in the framework of the Network of SAIs of candidate and potential candidate countries. In addition, in the Joint Working Group on Audit Activities (JWGAA), which promotes small-scale, practical, hands-on cooperation, we discuss how to implement international audit standards and safeguard the independence of the SAIs.
The SAIs that are interested to learn about our audit work send staff on secondment to us. Cooperation and exchanges take also place via EUROSAI. We have intensified our cooperation with the SAI in Ukraine since Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine started in February 2022.”
Shift to performance auditing
Has ECA achieved its aims in the transition to more performance auditing?
“The annual output of performance audits has increased in recent years and totalled almost 30 last year. Our audit resources are new equally divided between compliance auditing, which is a mandatory task, and performance auditing. We are happy to have reached a balance between the two main audit types.”
How does ECA decide on the scope of the audit? Do you unnecessarily limit the scope?
“Normally, the initial audit idea has a wider scope, but we cannot include too much in a single audit because of time and resource constraints. We want to finalize our reports in time and haven’t yet met our goal of maximum 13 months (currently, average time is 15 months). But we can always return to the topic in a new audit assignment and look at aspects that weren’t included in the previous audit.”
Are there still EU bodies and funding that are outside the scope of ECA’s audit or audits where ECA is denied access to documents?
“In our 2023 report on the EU’s financial landscape, we noted a patchwork construction that requires further simplification and accountability. There are some intergovernmental bodies and off-budget instruments that are outside the EU budget, such as the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Peace Facility (EPF), and therefore not subject to ECA’s audits.
But it’s still taxpayers’ money. In some cases, we see there is less scrutiny and accountability that there would be if it was within the EU budget. We would like to have the widest possible scope but it’s up to the co-legislators to initiate changes in our mandate and to ensure that we are not excluded from auditing any new structures being set up.
Finally, in terms of access to documentation, sometimes we come across issues where other bodies are implementing the projects (e.g. the UN).”
Communication with audited bodies
Have you reconsidered the way you communicate with the auditees and take into account their replies in the so-called adversarial procedure?
“The procedure is based on the Financial Regulation which states that auditees have a right to reply (e.g. articles 265 for our annual report and 266 for our special reports) and can be seen as fact-clearing procedures. It differs from what is standard in some SAIs.
The auditee, mostly the Commission, might sometimes disagree with both findings, assessments and recommendations in the report and this is reflected in the reply which is delivered before the finalization of the draft report.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that ECA will change the report. Both sides are entitled to their opinions. As our peers in other supreme audit institutions remarked recently, disagreements between auditor and auditee are sometimes inherent and are not necessarily a bad sign for an independent audit institution. Sometimes, we basically agree to disagree beyond simply seeing the glass as half-full or half-empty.”
Are you satisfied with the degree of acceptance and implementation of your recommendations?
“In our view, the results are satisfactory,” the ECA President replied. “Our special reports that were published in 2023 contained 220 recommendations. The auditees fully accepted 85% of these recommendations, while 10% were partially accepted. When we look at implementation, in 2024, around 90% of some 200 recommendations that we followed up from 2020, had been partially or fully implemented."
Audit and politics
How do media contribute to the coverage and impact of ECA’s audits?
“Media are very important for us and help us to ensure the citizens are informed about our audits. Thanks to media outlets we can broaden the reception of our findings to citizens and stakeholders across Europe and beyond. Media also helps in getting our messages across in a simple and digestible way, by which we again increase our outreach.
News articles about our reports also foster public debate on key issues and may also encourage policymakers to address these going forward. It’s all about driving change for the better, helping the EU run better.”
Public audit is to some extent subjective in its assessments. On the other hand, as auditor you are supposed to act objectively. Can political opinions influence the audit?
“While public audit involves professional judgment, objectivity remains paramount. Our auditors are bound by strict professional auditing and ethical standards. Members must also affirm to act in the interest of the Union - maintaining impartiality and independence at all times. Our onus to the citizen is to be objective and impartial.
As auditors, we don’t audit political decisions as such. While we do evaluate policies, our assessment is based on whether the funds were used in accordance with their intended purpose, not on the political decisions or the justification behind the policies themselves. Our mandate is to provide independent, factual audits, not to judge the legitimacy or correctness of political choices.”
Everybody asks if the audit results in improvement. Has the EU public service and administration improved following the audits?
“The aim of audit is to identify areas for improvement in efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability ultimately leading to better policymaking and strengthened public trust. As mentioned earlier, many of our audit recommendations have led to improvements, but change sometimes takes time and varies by context. Overall, I’m satisfied with the results but this doesn’t mean not to strive for better results.”
Judging by the peer review, which ECA President Murphy referred to, ECA has reason to be satisfied. The review, which was carried out by four SAIs and published in April this year, covered some of the issues that were raised in the interview, such as ECA’s audits of the RRF, its data collection methods and last but not the least relations with auditees.
Sharing experiences during a peer review will contribute to improving all involved institutions, commented the peer review group. While the review overall concluded that the results of the review demonstrated the high standards at the ECA, it also indicated that there is improvement potential in certain areas.
Based in Luxembourg, ECA employs 882 permanent and temporary staff of all EU nationalities. Of these, 558 (63%) worked as auditors, 141 in administration, 128 in translation and 55 in the Presidency, (the President’s private office, the Directorate of the Presidency, the Legal Service and the Internal Audit Service). In addition, ECA employed 84 contract staff and 26 seconded national experts.
More information about ECA can be found in its latest activity report published in May 2025.
